May 28, 2010

Fangraphs Fantasy on John Ely

… True to the scouting reports, Ely isn’t lighting up radar guns — his fastball is averaging 87.9 MPH. However, he’s not using the pitch much (about 32 percent), and when he does, he gets strikes (70.1 percent, 64.4% MLB average). Ely’s bread-and-butter is his changeup. According to Pitch F/X data from texasleaguers.com, he has pulled the string about 41 percent of the time. The change has garnered a strike 74.2 percent (60.7% MLB average), and it has been whiffed at 21.6 percent (12.6% MLB average). He’s also mixing in mid-80’s sliders/cutters, as well as a slooow 70 MPH curve.

Despite his modest stuff, Ely has managed to get swinging strikes 9.1 percent to this point (8-8.5% MLB average), while getting batters to chase his pitches out of the zone 29.1% (27.7% MLB average). …